“It’s for his son’s school,” I said.
“Oh, Tyrian?” She smiled and I just knew. Just knew.
“You know my son?”
“Yes. I met that sweet boy at the house. So cute. Looks just like his father. You think?”
Val was telling me everything I needed to know in her way. The way women shared secrets. She weighted the words “house” and “cute” and “father” with a taunt that said, “I’m fucking your ex-husband.”
And I didn’t care. After our divorce, Jamison had been spotted in strip clubs and was being courted by half of the social-climbing single sisters in Atlanta. I knew he wouldn’t be on the market for long. But there was something about Val that made me . . . just interested. She was so much younger than me. Maybe ten years. Had a skinny neck and skin that might’ve looked like butter even if she wasn’t wearing makeup. She was the kind of woman most black men would stop and look at—ask out on a date just because they had to try. But something about her was dark, angry, and I thought that was probably what attracted most men to her. Attracted Jamison to her. She seemed complicated. Like a trip. A wild ride.
Her cell phone rang. A picture of Jamison was on the screen. I looked at her clear, chunky high heels as she spoke to him softly. Laughing. Twirling around in her seat.
Then I heard my name—mentioned from her lips like she’d said it before.
“Kerry, he wants to talk to you,” Val said, looking up at me like I was her mother about to speak to her boyfriend. She held the little cell phone out to me. I almost didn’t want to touch it, but knocking it out of her hand like I wanted to would reveal too easily my emotions. I decided to talk to Jamison instead.
“I told you I’d email the list to you, Kerry,” Jamison hammered in without saying hello.
“I said I would come get it,” I answered. Both he and I knew this was just nonsense—my stopping by the office for a document that I probably hardly needed. But in the face of my desire to see where he was working, I had to rest my wants on a visit. During the divorce I’d assumed fifty percent of the current and future profits of a lawn care business Jamison had started when we got married. Rake It Up was the Southeast’s most profitable black-owned manicuring corporation. Jamison made more than five million dollars a year and he wasn’t happy about giving me a dime associated with what he’d called his success, but a judge wasn’t convinced that my connections and assistance early on in the business hadn’t contributed to its success. So after months in battle, I got half. When Jamison decided to run for mayor, he needed capital, so I bought him out for another ten percent and loaned him ten percent. I then had the lion’s share of the power over a self-sufficient business that had a CEO and needed little more from me than a signature here and there. I was rich. I didn’t have to work another day in my life. And so was Jamison. Rich and free. And when he won the election, he became rich and free and powerful.
“Fine, then,” Jamison said on the phone. “I’ll just have Val give you a list. Can you wait?”
“I’ll wait,” I said.
Jamison said something to Val and she powered up her computer like it was the “flux capacitor” in Back to the Future. The thing struggled to attention like it hadn’t been turned on in days.
I sat down and watched her type out the letter with one finger. I took a picture and texted it to Marcy with a note: Jamison’s new assistant.
She responded as only a best friend could: Assistant dick holder?
When I finally gave up and was about to leave the office without the letter, I heard the printer begin to churn out a page and Val turned to me announcing that she was “All done.”
“Great,” I said, standing up to get the letter.
She stood, gathering the letter from the printer, and I saw that her skirt barely covered her upper thigh and a large red butterfly that looked more like a bleeding bat was etched into the space just above her right knee.
She handed me the letter and I read quickly what sounded like something Tyrian had written a year ago when he was in kindergarten. There was no date, no address, she’d managed to misspell “Kerry,” and her sentences sounded like she’d typed exactly what Jamison had said over the phone. She’d misspelled “sincerely” and had the nerve to try to take the paper back from me so she could sign Jamison’s name.
“No need to sign it,” I said. “I’ll just take it like this.” (I was going to toss the thing as soon as I walked out.)
“Okay.” She rolled her eyes at my quick movement and went back to her seat.
“Hey, how long have you been working here? For Jamison?”
“Just a few weeks.”
“And he’s paying you?”
Val must’ve caught onto my tone because her next response was tampered with a mix of braggadocio and defensiveness.
“Yes, seventy-five-K. You looking for a job or something?”
“No. My days of working for Jamison are long gone,” I said. I folded the letter and was about to walk out, but I saw in Val’s eyes that she was about to say something.
“You ain’t better than me,” she said.
“I didn’t—”